Red Bullet Addendum: SPACE THROUGH TIME


The Chapel sanctifies the Fort;
The Fort profanes the Chapel.


Time modifies space, or at least space as we know it, for as our ideas evolve, so too the lenses with which we measure and give meanings to the spaces we inhabit and imagine. Once-clear boundaries become blurred; path becomes destination; Cartesian linearity turns upon itself. The Chapel is emptied of sanctity, if it ever possessed it in the first place. Its visual symmetry; its tectonic and epistemic surety are but anamorphic projections belying a tortured, ruinous dance with war that spans the depth and breadth of human history.

Given the tendency towards purity of form and theoretical aspirations contained within the thesis, the "Chapel" as program was perhaps too burdened by its own history and therefore tended to bend the thesis trajectory to its own agenda. Perhaps a less culturally-charged program, such as the notion of "vessel", described in Chapters 3 & 4, would have provided a more minimal, abstract vehicle to explore the shifting edges of space, form and idea.

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© 2024 Philip S. Wheelock, Jr. AIA